


love letters

by allgay



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, Trans Mike Wheeler, angsty but it ends good no worries, one short one shot! for the pullman, she's a lesbian and in love w her butch gf el
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 10:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12838857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allgay/pseuds/allgay
Summary: El's back, and Mike's over the moon and head over heels. But it's hard to readjust and feel secure.





	love letters

**Author's Note:**

> hey! so glad you're here. a quick note: this work features mike wheeler as i see her. that is, as a trans lesbian. if you disagree with that, it's totally cool, but don't be hateful about it. anyway this is for my fucking fans, for god, and for the gays. i hope you enjoy :-)

On the three hundred and fifty-fourth day, Mike switched her walkie-talkie on and put the antenna up. Her mouth opened as she pressed the talk button, but nothing came out. For three hundred and fifty-three days, the words had bubbled out of her like cool water from a spring, but now, they had run dry. It had all melted away the second she met eyes with El.

El! El. She was home. She was home, and she was here. Tears made Mike’s eyes glassy. Her smile! Her hair! Her eyes! The softness of her jaw, the set in her shoulders. Here and there and everywhere, drifting through the Byers’. She exploded through Mike’s mind. And she had been listening. Three hundred and fifty-three days. She heard. 

Now that she was here, and she had looked in Mike’s eyes again...There was nothing left to say. It was all there, written in the bouncing of Mike’s leg, the stripes on her shirt, the curl of her eyelashes. A blush gathered high in her cheeks when she remembered all the things she had said to El, those nights over the radio. She remembered the nights she had sat, playing the same song over and over, sniffling quietly, tears rolling over her freckles.  She remembered the nights with the covers over her head, whispering all her secrets into the dark, to a girl that wasn’t there. She remembered the nights she cried and admitted to El how much she missed her. Would El think she was dumb? Would she be mad? Would she think Mike was… gross? 

Her heart jumped at the thought and an ugly, sick taste came into her mouth. Like a lace doily lying dirty on a city street. She wasn’t dumb, you know. She’d heard her father, the kids at school, the TV. But no. No, she knew El wasn’t like that, couldn’t be like that. She loved Mike. 

Even still. It was embarrassing to have her whole soul bared like that! Mike’s hands twitched. Her mind raced. She traced the pattern of the wallpaper in Will’s living room. The five of them - her, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Max - were laid out on the floor, pretending to sleep. Hopper had taken El straight home, she was dead on her feet after closing the gate and she needed sleep. She needed sleep, Mike reminded herself. Sleep. Not more walkie-talkie messages. So she turned the walkie talkie off, pushed in the antenna, and tossed it in her bag.

But her mind was still churning. Ideas swirled around her brain, through her hippocampus and under her frontal lobe and around her occipital lobe. There was nothing and everything and something to say to El, about El, with El. Mike lurched forward and her hands found the crayons and paper Will had used to make the map. She began to write, crayon flying across the paper, writing of love and loss and other things fourteen year old girls have no business knowing about. But Mike never was a girl to play by the world’s rules.

 

By the three hundred eighty ninth day, Mike was running out of space in the box where she stored the letters. Dozens of them burst from the seams:  “El,” “To El,” “For El,” “Dear El,” “My El.” Five-page letters, some done out in flowery cursive, some in a tragic, tiny chicken scratch. Tears on some, doodles on others. Perfume sprayed on one, from when Mike was feeling especially romantic. Love in every single one.

“It isn’t the same as the radio,” she explained to Will. Her long legs dangled off the edge of the bed and her arm was thrown dramatically across her forehead. She dragged herself up for a moment to look at Will. He was drawing, or maybe sketching, hundreds of crayons surrounding him, and when he saw her looking he smiled and nodded for her to continue. She flopped back down and her curls flopped with her. “That was a dialogue. The letters are an ode!”

Mike said this with great panache.

“Hey,” Will joked. “I thought I was the tortured artist in all this.”

Talking quickly, Mike responded, “No, no, no, you are! I’m just a fool in love…”

More dramatic arm flailing ensued.

After a pause, Will spoke, softly but surely. “Mike? Why don’t you show El the letters?”

Mike didn’t answer for a minute, then two. She curled up onto her side and Will turned around in his chair to look at her. Eventually, Mike sighed. “I’m scared, Will. I know she loves me. But the way I love her… Will, it’s like the world is inside of my stomach and beating inside my heart. You know?”

Will, who was very well acquainted with the sensation of non-corporeal concepts-slash-beings being inside of one’s stomach and beating inside one’s heart, nodded empathetically because he knew the feeling. “And?”

“And I just - I’m scared she doesn’t feel the same! What if one day she wakes up and realizes… That I’ve just been there. And I’m just convenient. And she… she doesn’t really love me.” Mike’s voice cracked with this and she sobbed quietly. 

Will was by her side in an instant. “Mike… You have to talk to El. You have to talk to her about this. I know Hopper doesn’t always let her over, but you have to tell her how you’re feeling.”

Mike whined. “I don’t want to bother her. I want to be happy with her when I see her. I love her so much, Will. I really do.”

“I know, Mike. And that’s why you have to tell her.” Mike started to interrupt, but Will cut her off. “Mike! Listen to me. She may be feeling the same right now. And you have to communicate with her. You love each other so much. Okay?” Mike nodded. “Okay. Now please would you get off of me. You’ve already been here for 2 hours, just lamenting, and it’s only 8 A.M. on Saturday morning.” Mike harrumphed, protesting that she was an early bird et cetera et cetera. Will laughed. “Go find your girlfriend, you damsel in distress.”

 

El opened the door with her hands instead of her mind and grinned at Mike, who was already barrelling in, talking three miles a minute. She grabbed Mike’s wrist and steered her onto the couch where she collapsed on top of El. El giggled. “Hey,” Mike said breathlessly, half from the talking, and half because El still made her flustered.

“Hi, Mike,” El said, smiling up at her.  They beamed at each other. Mike was lost in a swirl of love. Her limbs felt weightless . But she remembered what she had come for. Her smile dropped. El’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong, Mike?”

They shifted so that they were squished together, lying on their sides and facing together, faces so close their noses could have touched. “El… Do you remember when I walkie-talkied you every day?”

“Three hundred and fifty three days.”

“Right. Um.” Mike’s hands twitched and El clutched them in her own, stroking her thumbs. “After you came back, I stopped. Cause I could just, um, talk to you instead?” El nodded, confirming. “And, uh, I didn’t call you anymore, and I, uh, did something else. But I didn’t tell you because I was…Um, I was scared.” Mike let out a breath and her ribcage relaxed, though her shoulders stayed tense. El looked at her, a question in her eyes. “I… I love you a lot, El. I was scared that you didn’t love me? As much as I loved you. And, um, that you loved me because I was just here? And you didn’t really know anyone else. So I didn’t, um. Tell you about the letters. Or show you. But Will told me I should. So I am. I’m sorry. I don’t know. I love you.” She rolled away from El, making to get up off the couch, but El caught her by the waist and pulled her back in. 

“I love you, Mike.” She placed her hand on Mike’s back, feeling her heart beat. “You are home. Okay?”

“Okay.” Mike giggled a little. “Wanna read the letters?”


End file.
